About the US/LHC Project

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland is opening new vistas on the deepest secrets of the universe, stretching the imagination with newly discovered forms of matter, forces of nature, and dimensions of space. This site provides general information about the Large Hadron Collider and detailed information about American participation in the LHC accelerator and experiments. U.S. LHC participation is supported by the US Department of Energy's Office of Science and the National Science Foundation.

A proton-proton collision event in the CMS experiment producing two high-energy photons (red towers). This is what we would expect to see from the decay of a Higgs boson but it is also consistent with background Standard Model physics processes. (Courtesy: CERN)

The US and LHCf

Turner led the design and fabrication of the forward neutral particle absorber, called a TAN, four of which are used in the LHC. The TAN absorbs neutral particles created in collisions in the center of the ATLAS and CMS experiments. These neutral particles are produced at small angles and thus travel along the beam line with the accelerated protons. Such neutral particles must be absorbed before they reach the LHC's many dipoles and quadrupoles, as the heat they generate could cause problems for the operation of the superconducting magnets. The TAN was designed with an instrumentation slot that accommodates the LHCf calorimeter and other devices.

Turner participated in tests of the prototype LHCf calorimeters that were carried out at another CERN accelerator, the SPS. He also helped write the LHCf Letter of Intent and Technical Design Proposal submitted to CERN during the approval process for the experiment.